The Central Business District is a grid and street names run in alphabetical order with female names going north-south and male names running east-west. So if someone asks you to take Anne Street to George Street the directions are pretty easy to follow. There are several transit options around the city. There is the bus, which I have never taken; the ferry, which I have taken once but cannot tell you much about aside from the fact that it is really cool; and the train, which I have have only taken twice, once was from the airport and the other time was on a drunken mission to Fortitude Valley so the only things that I can tell you about the train with certainty are that it is clean and I think it runs until around midnight? Anyway, by now I am pretty familiar with the city. I know where I can find cheap sushi, $6 for four rolls (downstairs in the food court on Queens Street Mon-Wed from 5-5:30); the cheapest beer (the hostel bar during happy hour Victoria Bitter $8.50 a pitcher - here they call it a jug); and even a bolted outdoor cliff side (Kangaroo Point).
The hostel that I live in is called Brisbane City Backpackers (http://www.citybackpackers.com/). It is a large complex complete with free wifi, rooftop city views, tanning decks, a bar, movie room and a pool that no one ever goes in. My bed is located in room 40, a thirty bed dungeon my Canadian friend and I fondly refer to as "the Orphanage." The room's inhabitants are mostly long-termers, backpackers who have lived here for multiple months, so it is a mystery as to everyone how Canada and I slipped into the room. One of the long-termers is a guy from Canada who makes a six-figure income and yet decides to live in the social setting of the hostel. This all sounds great, but the other day he was complaining to me that he couldn't find a girlfriend, to which I replied bluntly "Well if a guy took me home and his house happened to be a thirty bed hostel room full of smelly backpackers...I would leave."
My core group of acquaintances here consist of two Canadians, two English guys, two
Swedish guys, and a Scottish guy, most of whom barely leave the Orphanage, which is comfortably reminiscent of some of my friends back home (you know who you are :)) In the morning they lie around, making fun of each other and generally talking shit. Fast foreword to six hours later: they are in the same position only a fresh bottle of Goon has miraculously appeared to join the party. They have recently developed the habit of posting up around the same two bunk beds so it is not uncommon for me to return from exploring or climbing at Kangaroo Point to find a couple of British guys chilling on my bed. Their excuse for laziness: they have been traveling for six months, however I have the sneaking suspicion that they have been living the same way since they got to Australia.
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Yesterday was my first excursion out of the city. This Australian guy took me to Mt. Warning, about two hours south in Wollumbin National Park just across the boarder in New South Whales. We powered through the 8.8km hike in about three hours The first part of the trail climbed through beautiful rain forest. This is not a dense canopied forest like the Amazon, but rather an open forest with an abundance of palm trees, ferns, and thick burnt orange trunks with bark so lightweight a chunk breaks like driftwood under your fingers. As the trail climbs, the forest loses density and the last km consists of following a metal chain up a somewhat steep rock face (not steep for climbers, but steep for everyone else). From the peak of Mt. Warning, I could see across green undulating hillsides, all the way out to the coastline.
On the way back from Wollumbin, we took a detour through the Gold Coast so I could get a taste of the glitzy, Surfers Paradise. Since I arrived in Queensland I have heard a lot of people equate the Gold Coast to Miami Beach, and..well.they were right: the Gold Coast is just like Miami, there is even an area called "Miami Beach." Regardless, it was amazing to see the ocean again. I missed ominous waves, the site of the horizon and the view to infinity.
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